Mission
Norwegian Academy of International Law (NAIL) is a cosmopolitan community of senior researchers and fellows of international normative sciences. NAIL seeks to strengthen the knowledge infrastructure of public international law. Our mission is to promote and consolidate a Nordic perspective of international law of war and peace in a global world order based on the rule of international law.
NAIL is located in Norway, a country with a century-long tradition of engagement to strengthen and consolidate an international legal order that prevents war and armed conflict, promotes peace, security and human rights. NAIL is firmly anchored in a Nordic perspective of international law. We promote post-graduate courses, academic legal research, policy studies and expert meetings in which the Nordic approach and understanding of international law and justice relating to war and peace is relied on. Through close interaction with international organizations, NGOs, experts, and governments, NAIL seeks to actively participate in global discussions of international law and process that will shape our common future.
NAIL has the ambition to provide post-graduate education and training courses, conduct academic legal research and policy studies, and organize expert meetings. We focus on branches of international law that includes treaty law, international process, peace agreements, law relating to situations of armed conflict, arms and disarmament, and protection of human rights.
Fields of expertise
- INTERNATIONAL LAW OF WAR AND PEACE
- INTERNATIONAL LAW OF ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
- INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
- THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
- INSTITUTION BUILDING AND INTERNATIONAL REGIMES
- MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY
- INTERNATIONAL PROCEDURE / PROCESS
People
Dr Cecilie Hellestveit (ch@intlaw.no) is a lawyer with a PhD in international humanitarian law (IHL) from the University of Oslo and a social scientist with a background in area- and conflictstudies. She has been associated with a number of research institutes in Norway (PRIO, SMR / UIO, NUPI, IKOS, ILPI) and abroad (including the Max-Planck Institute Recht und Völkerrecht in Heidelberg, the Atlantic Council in Washington, Faculty of Law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Institute of Applied Ethics in Saarbrucken). Hellestveit researches and teaches in the field of international law and the use of force, international humanitarian law and armed conflicts, with an empirical emphasis on the broader Middle East. Hellestveit also serves as a special advisor at the Norwegian Institution for Human Rights, focusing on new technology and human rights. She has authored books on the wars in Syria (A great war in a small world) and Yemen (Unhappy Arabia – the world after Yemen), and on Russias war of aggression against Ukraine (Disquiet at the Eastern Front). With Gro Nystuen, she published The laws of armed conflict – Norway and the wars of our time in 2020. Hellestveit has been a member of the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund Global since 2015. In 2019-2020 she served on the governmental commission to review the ethical guidelines for the Fund, and she is currently a member of the governmental commission on to counter extremism. Hellestveit has served as an international rapporteur to the International Society for Military Law and the Laws of War, and she heads the Council for war-decorations to the Ministry of Defense. She chairs the board of Oslo World Music Festival, and she is a monthly columnist in the weekly Dag og Tid and the weekly Morgenbladet. Hellestveit speaks French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and some German and Hebrew.
Dr Kjølv Egeland (ke@intlaw.no) holds a DPhil (PhD) in International Relations from Oxford University (Wadham College) and a Master’s degree (MPhil) in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Oslo. He was a consultant at the International Law and Policy Institute from 2013 to 2017. His current research explores the evolution of the institutional architecture for multilateral nuclear disarmament and the conditions for change in international politics. He has published peer-reviewed articles in a range of journals, including Nordic Journal of International Law, Critical Studies on Security, Global Change, Peace and Security, Internasjonal Politikk and Nytt norsk tidsskrift. He has also written for weekly newspapers and magazines, including New Internationalist, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Morgenbladet. He is a regular contributor to the Norwegian cultural journal Samtiden.
Dr Gro Nystuen (gn@intlaw.no) (cand. jur and dr. juris) is an international lawyer with a doctorate from 2004 in public international law, with a special focus on human rights law and necessity. She worked in the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 2005. In addition to a number of topics covered by public international law and treaty law in general, she has worked in particular with international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, arms export control law, disarmament law and arms control law, constitutional law, peace agreements, human rights, international criminal law, and procedural law. Nystuen has taken part in the negotiations of a number of treaties and participated in a several international multi-stakeholder diplomatic processes. She is an expert on international/multilateral legal procedure for international conferences and negotiation processes within the UN as well as other international forums. Nystuen has also worked on a number of issues related to corporate social responsibility and business and human rights. She has published extensively on the above issues. With Cecilie Hellestveit, she published The laws of armed conflict – Norway and the wars of our time in 2020.
Magnus Løvold (ml@intlaw.no) holds an MPhil in Peace and Conflict Studies and is a policy adviser on multilateral processes and global advocacy at NAIL. He has extensive expertise in multilateral processes, international diplomacy and global advocacy and has experience from a variety of international institutions. Until 2015, Løvold led the strategy, policy and campaign coordination of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Between 2015 and 2017, Løvold carried out policy analysis, documentation, facilitation of policy dialogue and stakeholder mapping at ILPI as well as consultancy assignments with the Humanitarian Affairs section of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2017 until 2018, he worked in the policy areas of humanitarian protection, disarmament, gender and human rights as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva. Løvold is currently working as a policy adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Torbjørn Graff Hugo (tgh@intlaw.no) holds an MPhil in Peace and Conflict Studies and is a policy advisor on multilateral processes and global advocacy at NAIL. Hugo has extensive practical and theoretical experience from multilateral policy work and global advocacy. He has previously worked for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 2011 and 2017, he worked at the International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI), primarily on nuclear weapons policy, including as coordinator of ILPI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction project. Hugo has also done consultancy work for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva. Over the past few years, Hugo’s work has focused, among other things, on the global governance of marine plastic pollution, and he has authored and contributed to a long list of reports and policy briefs on the issue, including for the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), GRID Arendal, and the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment.
Steffen Kongstad, Cand Polit with Political Science, History and Public Law and a former diplomat. Kongstad worked 42 years in the Norwegian Foreign Service with various issues related to security policy, humanitarian affairs, human rights, international humanitarian law, disarmament, arms control and global health. He has participated in several multilateral, multi-stakeholder processes both within and outside the UN system, including in several treaty negotiations. He has broad experience in working closely with governments, civil society actors and various international organisations such as the UN and the OSCE. Kongstad retired from the Foreign Service in 2022 and is currently a Practitioner-in-Residence with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and is affiliated with NAIL.
Dr Stuart Casey-Maslen is an Honorary Professor at the University of Pretoria’s Human Rights Centre. He holds a doctorate in international humanitarian law and master’s degrees in international human rights law and forensic ballistics. Recent publications include Hague Law Interpreted: The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of Armed Conflict, published by Hart in September 2018, and Drones and Other Unmanned Weapons Systems under International Law, a co-authored work published by Brill in August 2018. His legal commentary on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was published by Oxford University Press in January 2019, and International Disarmament Law: A Practical Guide, co-authored with Tobias Vestner of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, was published by Routledge in June 2019.